


Rebirth and Repent

by Dlt111



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Multi-AU mentioned, Reincarnation, Repentance, Will elaborate on some of the lives if you want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:31:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2359679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dlt111/pseuds/Dlt111
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren and Levi had to sacrifice a lot of human lives in the war on titans. As they die, they find themselves being punished by the universe for their 'killings' and endure 15 lives of pain just to get to the life they deserve, the 16th. With those 15 lives lived, they're eager to get to Earth again and experience a happiness that exceeds all others, but... Will it really be that easy for them to live happily in this 16th life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebirth and Repent

_“One never knows the extent of their sins until the day that they die.”_

As new spirits in their first incarnation, Humanity’s Strongest and Humanity’s Hope lived their lives in the way their most basic nature let them. Humanity’s Strongest lived coldly and shouldered many things not his own with a sense of duty not to be trifled with. Humanity’s Hope lived with justified rage and determination, keeping hold of his innocence of mind until the end.

As the two souls interacted, their hearts were pushed along to the last of their concerns, ignoring the fact that their soulmate was with them the entire time until that day. Neither knew during that incarnation that while they fought without each other they could never hope to defeat their foes. Hope for humanity in this lifetime almost died that day. But… well, let’s just watch how the day played out.

******  
“Corporal! The Ape Titan has been sighted! It’s by Eren and I think they were going to engage each other!” The horse-bound soldier was out of breath and panting, but that didn’t matter when he’d finished his job correctly. Corporal Levi had left his horse and was on the way with him to the location of the fight that would decide it all. The sounds of battle echoed all around them as a cacophonic background noise, a dying scream piercing the men’s consciousness as they carried on without stopping to help.

As they arrived at the chosen battlefield, the Ape Titan and the Rogue Titan stood a good forty meters apart, locked in a death glare as silence prevailed. Around seventy titans surrounded them, standing there helplessly, some swaying as if pulled by an invisible ebbing and flowing wave. A moment’s hesitation had Levi wondering if he should enter, but the decision was made for him when his horse’s movements distracted Eren for a split moment and the titans all converged in on him.

“DAMMIT EREN!” he yelled angrily as he went for the Ape Titan. The hook piercing the furry flesh distracted the titan momentarily and Eren tossed the titans off, roaring loudly and sending them to the Ape titan. The Rogue Titan was badly injured and torn apart, but still able to stand, bone exposed in many parts. The Ape Titan grabbed ahold of Levi’s wire and threw him as he turned his focus back to the titans devouring his legs and hanging off anything they could.

The small form flying through the air had Eren’s attention again as he tried to catch the small male. It gave Levi just the right distance to hook into the flesh on the Rogue Titan’s wrist and swing himself up onto his shoulder.

“Pay attention!” Sharp green eyes snapped forward and continued to push on the titans below with his will. “Remember what we’ve been practicing at base? Think you could do both?” The Corporal asked his subordinate. A guttural moan was all he received as a response, but he hooked into the flesh remaining and bent down some to reduce wind gusts.

The 15 meter titan rushed his much taller, furred counterpart and pushed out a large gust of mist that rushed over the titans he was trying to control. It settled around them for a moment before a roar from him solidified the mist instantly into ice about 3 meters thick, immobilizing the titans.

“Use 78. I’ll go for 39.” Another grunt and the deteriorated body began to line itself with fire. The tiny man jumped from the body and rushed to the cover of nearby trees. The Ape Titan seemed to be torn between going after the annoying wasp of a human and facing his foe. The smaller titan slammed his fist into the ground, digging deeply and pulling out a boulder about the size of his fist. He pushed the fire onto the boulder before molding it quickly into a crude sword.

The Ape Titan made up its mind and rushed to attack the offending titan with a hardened blade growing off of his own arm. Eren didn’t seem too concerned as he rushed forward as well, swiping at the titan’s head, the height difference angering him, but not stopping him. The two met in a clash of blades, Eren’s chipping at the contact. The two continued to fight like that, moving quickly for their large sizes.  The Ape Titan kept whittling down Eren’s blade.

The moment Eren’s blade was ruined and he dropped it, Levi came whirling out of the forest for a slice at the Ape Titan’s neck. He made the cuts deep and penetrating and the titan fell, but as he fell, his blade sliced through Eren inside of the Rogue Titan. Levi rushed to the fallen comrade and began to pull him out of the scorching hot flesh only to find that Eren… had lost his right arm, right leg, left leg from the knee down, and had sustained significant damage to his pelvis, the bones showing grotesquely.

Soft green eyes opened to see their commanding officer’s flinty eyes filled with shock, concern, and a small sheen he may have believed to be tears.   
“Heal!” was the given command.

“But he’s dead… And we have to…. Get rid of all… titans… Sir…. So I cannot heal…” The sixteen year old male responded despite his intense wounds. His titan healing kept starting and stopping, his will fighting his body’s needs.

“But you’re human so heal! We have more to kill!” The normally emotionless man screamed at his faithful subordinate.

“No… I’m not… I’m a monster, Sir…. I won’t-“ Their moment was suddenly interrupted by a chilling growl. Eren’s regeneration began quickly as his attention was split from stopping it. He suddenly willed it to work even faster as he watched the Ape Titan stand slowly, as if having a hard time. The wounds on his neck were healing.

Eren stood on stubby legs and panted harshly as he brought his hand to his mouth. “I won’t lose to you, asshole!” he growled as he attempted to steady his breathing one last time. Suddenly biting down as his commanding officer grabbed him to stop him, the two were absorbed into the titan… and it changed shape. The titan was even shorter, but much more muscular and agile. It began to move like Levi as it suddenly grew hardening powers and fire covered it again. It zig-zagged behind the Ape Titan as it grew ice in its flaming hands, the normally brittle substance steel-like in its strength now, no longer transparent.

The Titan, later dubbed Humanity’s Titan, rushed the Ape Titan with the ferocity of both men inside. Humanity’s Titan attached itself to the Ape Titan, ripping at it with its blades as the other titans rushed out of the ice to attack it. Fighting the other titans with the grace of Levi and the rage and passion of Eren, Humanity’s Titan dispatched a third of those titans with the few moments they attacked it until Eren used the powers he was granted to push the titans to fight the weakened Ape Titan.

As the small titans ate at the large titan, Humanity’s Titan began hacking at the Ape Titan’s neck, working until the titan fell to the ground, head severed and soon devoured. Humanity’s Titan tried to turn on them only to find that the titan body it was utilizing was releasing its two conductors. Much to everyone on the battlefield’s shock and surprise, the titans all disappeared, both living and dead, evaporating into the air.

The two Humanity’s Strongest and Humanity’s Hope, fell to the ground, wrapped in an embrace. Eren had regrown his limbs and Levi seemed fine… Until they wouldn’t answer when called. The couple looked at each other, vision blurry and hearing muffled. A flutter of words crossed them as the two lied their heads down for the last time in that life time. Humanity’s Hope and Humanity’s Strongest… had died.

*****

As they awoke, away from their bodies, standing together on that field in limbo, watching as things happened around them, they wondered at their luck.

“So, this is how our first lives end, Corporal… The number of people I’ve killed unjustly somehow is in the low 30’s.” The boy held his soulmate’s hand for reassurance, scared for once.

“My own number is around 150… which is less than I expected, but still high…” A squeeze from the boy helped comfort the older man.

“It seems we won’t be happy for a long time… What should we do Levi?” he asked as he watched his friends cry over his body, Mikasa sobbing uncontrollably into his chest and Armin crying into her shoulder blade.

“Well, I’m not concerned. Even if it’s not for a long time, Eren, we will be happy someday, right? You’re Humanity’s Hope, so you should be the optimistic one, right?” The male watched as his commanding officer came over to him, silent tears streaking down his face as he gently ruffled the corpse’s black hair one last time. Hanji was on her knees, pleading with Levi to come back, promising not to tease him anymore, but finding it useless.

“But that’s not fair… I _was_ Humanity’s Hope. I’m not now.” The scene before them started to waver and become darker. 

“…Come on, we have to go. The universe has given us the time we need to say goodbye and if we don’t move soon… We’ll never be happy, Eren.” The scene was now a black cosmos of twinkling stars and they stood on nothing.

“Yeah… let’s go.” They turned and face the glowing orb that was the universe’s nerve center.

“ _You two… committed many crimes in your first lives. The only thing I care about are the lives you’ve taken one way or another, being at least 51% at fault or more. As such, Eren, you’ve killed 37 people in your life and 42 overall when you consider the future of that world and the actions that followed. Levi, you’ve caused 156 deaths throughout your life, and a total of 159 deaths considering the future of that world and the actions that followed. As a result, you, the pair of soulmates, need punishment._

_“But before deciding how many life times you’ll suffer we must take into consideration the number of lives you’ve personally saved. Eren, you’ve save a total of 1,791 lives during your life and Levi you have saved 8,947 lives during your life, not counting the lives you’ve save for the future. As a result, the deaths you’ve caused have been negated by the ones you’ve saved… However, I cannot allow lives as sinful as yours to be completely unpunished no matter how good the end result was._

_“Therefore, you’re both going to suffer fifteen lives and the sixteenth will be the year you’re freed, just as it was Eren’s sixteenth year that he was freed from Titans and his life. This is the kindest I can be while still being fair to those that you’ve killed. Be careful in these next lives not to kill anymore or we might have to reconsider this kind offer.”_ The omnipotent voice finished, the velvet genderless tone ending calmly.

The two looked at one another and then the nerve again and nodded, accepting their fates.

“ _Then let’s begin._ ”

***********

I remember the first life we had after the titans. It was an admittedly nice life. I was a round caterpillar with an insatiable appetite and you were a lovely gentle flower that I couldn’t wait to get to. But I knew that you were poisonous to eat and left you alone while I got fat and round. I’d sleep under your long trestle-y petals, careful not to breathe in too much of your poison. I would roll up with you on the colder days when your petals curled around me, seeking heat, just as I did.

When I went into the crystal, I dreamed about how this must have been how Annie felt in that horrible thing, recalling some of the things of those days. I ignored them as I began breaking out of the crystal and showed my new form off to you. Your black trestle-petals would wrap around me as I landed on your nectar-giving location. I would sit there for hours, happily breathing in the poison I was now immune to and carried on my large black, green, and silver wings.

I could tell you, too, were happy that we were together at last after such a horrific experience in our last lives. We spent so long together. I never left you and you never consumed me even though you could. We felt that maybe we’d been given a life that would last and that we could be forever happy in. We couldn’t have been more wrong. You and I… We lived about seven weeks before I was pulled away from you and you were plucked from the ground. I struggled to help you as you slowly died in their hands…. Then the large beings plucked my wings off one by one and crushed my abdomen. We died at the same time again and in a sad way.

************

The next life wasn’t too bad except that we were in Egypt. I was a slave laborer and you were a well-revered black cat, much like our God. You would follow me around endlessly and I would give you affection when no one was looking. Often when I was caught, I was punished for ‘forcing my will’ upon a god walking this earth and there was nothing we could do. I still loved you and wanted to feel you.

Our lives were cut short one day when invaders came and began killing cats. Strong as you were, you, too, were killed and when I tried to get revenge for you, I, too, was killed.

************

The third lives we lived were a bit easier for me and less so for you. I was a baby born to your parents who loved you dearly and wish I hadn’t happened. I enjoyed your protection and noticed nothing of their hatred while they would fight you day and night to get rid of me. You were always exhausted from this struggle with them, often falling asleep in the same bed as me. When our parents finally had enough, the simply had neighbors help restrain you and killed me out back in our rice fields. You were unhappy and lived on in despair with me watching over you as you lived and died, never taking your own life for fear of my anger, but never really living anymore. You even refused to take a wife and died without friends or family around at the age of 52, all for the child created by rape.

**********

I felt the fourth life was not a life I cared for much. When I was born, I was born addicted to drugs and never really got off of them. You were a boy who hated his rich loving parents for being too over-doting. We met when you were rebelling and looking for a prostitute to take home and scare them and I was working the streets for money for drugs. We instantly understood upon seeing each other that we were meant for each other. As much as you tried to get me off the streets and clean, I’d been drugged up for all seventeen years I’d been alive and could not stop.

So, as much as I hated it, you started my bad habit. I felt so guilty as I watched you shoot up for the first time, eyes so uncertain, but willing to please. I didn’t want you to do this, to hit this low with me, but because I couldn’t stop talking about the crazy great feeling of it and you wanted to be closer to me, you did it. Then we did it together as we slowly fell in love with each other and our lives. We’d make love while popping ecstasy and drinking booze. We didn’t care about anything. I remember, you overdosed on heroin that night while we fucked like bunnies and as I realized you weren’t going to live I took about four times as much as you. When I wasn’t overdosing, I literally took everything in our stash all in consecutive order and smirked as I felt the life leave me.

**************

As our fifth life began, I knew instantly I was going to love it. I was a puppy born on the same day as you into the same family. You were a cute little baby, nothing like the severe corporal I knew so long ago. We played together often and lived off of interaction together. When you began school, I was five years old, same as you, and honestly, that first day was the worst thing that happened to us in that life. The loneliness I felt was unbearable and you had a panic attack I heard. Suddenly talks started about whether or not we should actually be separated during school or not. There was even a brief discussion of us being separated more often for our own good which we both shot down, you with words and I with whimpers.

They decided to make me into a therapy dog so I could go with you. As much as I wanted to run around and be crazy with you, I understood that if I wasn’t a good dog, I’d be taken away from my adorable charge. I behaved crazily good and was rewarded by going with you in the second week of school for a test run. I behaved perfectly and shocked everyone. They let me stay by your side, a very happy time for me indeed.

We stayed that way, happy and enjoying life all throughout your school life. But sadly, this body couldn’t live as long as yours and when you turned twenty five, my mind could no longer hold onto my decrepit twenty five year old body. I died there in your arms one evening and you buried me the next day. It was the saddest day of your life… and you paid no attention to your surroundings. It led to a car hitting you and killing you.

****************

The sixth life was a horrible life, as if someone hated us horrible!  We lived in the Dark Ages as two poor children with happiness that only being a child could bring at the time. Even as I worked hard in the fields ad you, with your female body this time, learned to sew. You were an exquisite beauty for the area, but we already decided together that you weren’t to accept anyone’s hand except mine, our love being something of a childhood crush turned deeper.

You turned sixteen and accepted my hand in marriage. It was wonderful for us! We had our first child within a year and everything seemed great until our child died of a common child-killing disease. Little babe hadn’t even been named when it died. I can no longer remember if we had a boy or a girl, but it killed us inside to lose it. We cried often and while you were out on a walk one day to help clear your head, something even worse happened.

The king, a selfish man with many concubines, came by our small town and found you. Even though you were wed, because our child had died, he annulled our marriage on grounds that I was a Satan-worshiper and that he would take you into his seraglio to drive the devil out by giving you some of God’s work for women.  You were made into a concubine who often gave him children whom lived on despite you hating them and I…

I had been taken in and tortured to give up the names of the demons inside of me. There were none to give up and I endured unspeakable torture each night as you, my lovely wife, were raped by a slob. You finally died in childbirth at the age of 24. I died much earlier at 18 when my body could take no more of the torture. I remember screaming about how much I loved you as they pushed that last metal stake into my chest slowly, rupturing that fatal artery finally.

*********************

The seventh life wasn’t the worst one really, I was a woman in high class society France during the muddled times of the 1800’s. Napoleon was the Emperor and I was a wondrous woman for the classes. You… you were a cockatoo. I had you since I had turned seven and was deemed old enough for a pet, even if the maids were supposed to care for you. You were a cranky one with anyone but I and my parents weren’t sure they really wanted to let me have a bird as a pet, but these big puppy dog eyes – surely a carryover from the life I had at one point – were worth something when used on them.

I got to have you and you kept me company for many many years. I got a husband who treated me like shit and forced me to have as many children as possible – a total of fourteen! – but I could endure the beatings and the childbirth and rearing because I had you with me at all times. You watched him beat me and comforted me immediately afterwards. I knew you wanted to help, I could tell by the way you fixed him with that permanent glare you’d had since our initial life, but you were really just too adorable and easily hurt to cause him much concern. The first time you tried to help, one scream at you and you went back, just like the good bird I wanted you to be.

I remember the happiness you gave me up until the day you died at a ripe 43 years of age. I outlived my husband who died a year after you, and my children took care of me until I died as an old 82 year old woman.

*********************

Life eight was a blissful thing… if you enjoyed being seaweed. Yup! You were fucking seaweed. Me? I wasn’t much better off, I was a fucking piece of algae that hide near you, trying to live out my life as long as possible… which wasn’t long. We died together when a fish ate you, and in effect, me as well.

***************

The ninth life we had was the longest lives we’d ever had, and a fairly peaceful life at that. You were a large tree and I was a perineal flower planted near you. We had a family that lived near us. The boys of that family would climb all over you and the little girls would tend to me every year. The favorite part of this life for me was when your roots finally, _finally_ reached mine and intertwined. You grew big and tall, wisely growing your roots downwards and not outwards.

We lived with that family for many generations.  I remember at least five generations went by in that little farmhouse. I hoped that our next life would grant us children that would live on. After living for so long, the thing that ended our existence was a horrible tornado that hit and knocked you over onto me. We couldn’t live on after that in those bodies.

************************

The tenth life wasn’t a good life for us. As if the universe suddenly hated us again, it decided we would live on opposite sides of the Earth _and_ have memories of our initial life, the one that started this pain. We searched and searched for each other but never could make it to the other. You died of the plague and I had angered some natives in Africa, being poisoned by them.

*******************

I’ll always remember the eleventh life fondly. We weren’t born near each other, but just on the opposite side of the country. The two of us were into bondage and came to the same convention, meeting and instantly loving each other’s reactions to stimuli. You loved that there was such a wanton man who could grovel at your feet so lovingly and take any insult or hit you flung while still worshipping you and I loved that there was such a powerful woman who could take me down in a few small words, your favorite insult being “Shitty man”.

We kept in touch after the convention… and then I convinced you to come live with me as my dominatrix. I had a job as a CEO so it was no problem to support you and anything you wanted, not that you wanted much more than a clean place to mess up with me. You controlled all of me and in return I gave you everything I had.

One day, you decided you’d give back to me. A lovely baby girl who grew attached to the red scarf I took to hide your love bites. She was Mikasa, my adopted sister from my initial life, and I gave her all of the love and attention that was required of a doting father. I worshipped my two ladies and when you gave me another child, I was overwhelmed with joy. Petra had come to join us as our daughter. You even gave me a son, Armin, and to my delight, the last child you gave me was another girl to spoil rotten, little Annie.

I later found out that these were their first incarnations, and that it had helped them get over the traumas of their past life. We all lived in that life until we died of old age. You died before me because you had told me not to let you outlive me, so I outlived you… by a month. You were waiting right there for me, a smile on your soft face, both of us very happy with that life.

************

As if the universe remembered it wasn’t supposed to let us be happy yet, we made up for it by both being females in a time period where we were nothing but property… and both of us being poor, got stuck with horrible men. We were both raped by our husbands before they were our husbands. In fact, that’s how they became our husbands. We sadly endured brutal beatings nightly and talked about it in the day while doing the laundry together. We became secret lesbian lovers in that life… which is why we were killed. We had sinned so thoroughly that we were put to death by our husbands who had found us pleasuring each other. Female pleasure and relationships like that were in general sins, but to do so behind your husband’s back and without having produced those brutes any children? We weren’t worthy of even the air we breathed or the stones they killed us with.

*****************

Our thirteenth life was ….odd, to say the least. You were a cute glaring bunny and I a fox that refused to eat you. We would meet gazes often, but never confront each other until the day you twisted your ankle and a dog seemed to take an interest in what you’d taste like. I chased it off and carried you off to my den where you stayed, scared, glaring, and untrusting of me, rightfully so.

Even so, I watched over you, fed you the leaves I saw you eating and even shared in eating with you  with my own catches, mainly birds, and small animals, but never other bunnies. Over time you calmed down and cleaned my den for me and I helped you gather food since your foot never really healed fully. We lived that way until a hunter found us and killed us both, me for my pelt and you for your meat.

************************

The fourteenth life was a rare experience for souls such as ours. We were given the bodies of a vampire and an incubus. I was the incubus and you the vampire. We met up when we tracked the same girl, intending to take from her what we respectively desired of her. Neither of us gave up that night, following her to her room where I found she slept without a rosary and happily invaded her dreams. You tried to push me away and just take what you wanted, but I made a deal with you.

If you’d just play along and let me fuck her, I’d let you bite her in her high of ecstasy. You decided it was a unique enough experience and let me go at her. Right as she was approaching her end, I pulled back some and offered up her neck for you. You bit into her neck and happily drained her of a good portion of her blood. I made you stop, but you instead attacked me and sipped on my blood instead. It was then that you decided you liked the taste of a being in ecstasy the most.

You asked if you could trail me again for another good meal, and I, not trusting you 100%, required you to join in the sex the next time. You agreed to my shock and so we became a tag team duo. One of us would lure the woman away and then we’d fuck her senseless! Sometimes you’d get oral, anal, or even a breast job a few times, but every time you enjoyed them just as much as I did.

One time, you caught me fingering myself while I fucked the girl. I was, admittedly, imagining your dick up my ass. After that you always fucked me senseless while I went at the girl. You’d always get a good suck off her and then a little sip off me when we climaxed.

We went too far one day by taking on a priest’s daughter. As we happily went to that blissful state, fucking her on her precious altar, we were caught by her father and promptly killed before we could recover from our orgasms. It was later revealed, after we died, that it was all a ruse and that the girl was a sacrifice to get us. It wasn’t fair since we never killed, but sometimes I did impregnate those women… not that I minded at the time.

*************

Our fifteenth life was admittedly a rough thing to endure. Both of us were animals, you a cat and I a dog. We failed to find food most days on those poor streets we wandered. Often we would get into a test of who could intimidate the other the most for the few scraps of food we found, but ended up sharing it. We both ended up dying of starvation after nine years on the streets. It was a difficult existence.

******

“And that’s how we ended up here, at the end of our punishments and ready for the life that will forever make us the happiest, even happier than the eleventh life. We can choose which form we want, but that’s it… I’m choosing my original body and name, Levi, what about you?” I asked my love as we stood in front of each other, naked and in all of the forms that we’ve been in all at once, but never being in any one particular form. I watched him ungulate from his tree form to his cat form to his bunny for to his female form and so forth. I knew the moment I said my choice, my form solidified into my original form, the one I was most comfortable in.

“I’ll choose my original form as well.” It snapped into place and the man I’ve loved a total of sixteen times came back to a solid form in front of me.

“But this life we’re about to live, while it’s our happiest… we’re likely to remember everything from every life again… are you ready for that… Or should we wait here in limbo a while longer?”

I moved in closer to him, trying to touch him with my hand that fell right through him again and shook my head. “No, I want to live with you and be with you again and feel you beneath my hands.”

He nodded, closing his eyes for a moment. A sigh escaped those lips I loved so much. “Then let’s go,” he told me as he stared into my eyes so tenderly.

“Yeah, let’s go, Levi.” Our bodies faded away as our spirits fell into the bodies we’d be born into.

**Author's Note:**

> This was something swimming around my head for a while and I really liked the idea so I wrote it while I could! Please feel free to give ideas as to what their 16th life could be. I've got a few ideas, but I want to see which AU you all would go bananas over. Also, if you want any of their actual fifteen lives written out, please tell me and I'll make a side story about it.


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